A little bit fairy tale
by melignomon
Summary: A series of drabbles about TARDIS life between S5 and S6. It's a strange old Universe, and no mistake; but they're a strange little family. Will feature every combination of Amy, Rory, 11, River, and the TARDIS, getting up to all kinds of mischief.
1. Chapter 1

As you may have noticed, I haven't written anything a really long time, so I decided to work on some drabbles to get me back into the swing of things. Then I stumbled across the 100fairytales prompts on Livejournal, and this was born.

I'm not very good at drabbles; I'm much better when I can ramble on at length. But I'm going to post these here anyway, because it's my page and I can do what I like.

If I don't get sucked back into longer projects, then maybe I'll continue with these. I'm hoping to eventually feature every possible combination of Amy, Rory, Eleven, River, and the TARDIS, because they're my OT5 forever. :)

Also, unless they deal with a specific episode, these take place in my AU headcanon between series 5 and 6, so any series-6 twist absurdity does not apply.

* * *

><p>001. <em>The fox as shepherd.<em>

"Go," the Doctor says, or "Stay," and they go or they stay, because he's the Doctor, and he's wonderful.

And he saves planets and swans around and runs and hands Rory things, _attach that there, don't drop it, this next bit is very wibbley; _he leans on Amy in great rib-cracking hugs, _don't do that to me again, Pond, you gave me quite a scare_. He always knows what to do, and everything turns out fine.

And in his wonderfulness he lies to them, and he locks them in the TARDIS, and he waits days – _days _– to save Amy from the Silence, days that Rory spends hunched over like an old man, curled around the little blinking ember in his hand that calls and cries and begs for help in his wife's voice.

And Rory never fights, never disobeys, because he trusts the Doctor. He loves the Doctor. But in moments of alienness, when the Doctor moves at strange angles and won't look Amy in the eye, Rory finds himself reaching for her hand, as if to pull her back.

And when Amy and the Doctor each tell him to look after the other one, it isn't a difficult choice.

* * *

><p>006. <em>What was whispered in his ear.<em>

The Astronaut's blast knocks the Doctor to his knees, and he looks up across the burning beach as his hands start bleeding gold. Someone is shouting – Amy, probably. "I'm sorry," he tells her, nearly a whisper, but he's sure she'll hear. She always does.

He meets her wild eyes for a second, just for a second, then can't look anymore and his gaze darts instead to River, whose eyes are cold, cold with the shock of having lost so much that loss is no longer a shock. In this second that lasts forever he can see all of the grief he'll cause her, all of the times he'll make her love, make her suffer, make her learn to fight in spite of grevious wounds. Someone's shouting, and just before the Doctor dies he watches River's lips, waiting for her to speak that last word to absolve him, that last curse to condemn him. There's nothing but silence round him now; still, if she says it, he'll hear. He always does.

He wonders if she even knows it yet, his name.

* * *

><p>008. <em>Sin and grace.<em>

"You were in Stormcage," the Doctor says suddenly, as they're lying on a hammock suspended in the cavernous dark of the engine room. His voice brushes River's exposed skin like a scrap of rough velvet.

"Still am," she says. No point arguing: strange pillow talk is par for the course, with the Doctor.

"You keep escaping."

"Well, they locked me in. You can't expect a girl to stay put."

"Yes, but then you keep going back." He raises himself on one elbow, leans over her, his eyes thoughtful. "You escape, but not for good. Only to have an adventure or two with me. Why not make a proper run for it?"

There's a long silence, then the Doctor sighs. "It's all right, you don't have to answer. I know what you're doing."

River feels her lips quirk into a knowing smile, though she suddenly feels like a young, terrified, impressionable girl all over again. "And what am I doing?"

"Penance," the Doctor says. His long, bony fingers trace her collarbone like an archaeologist uncovering a shard of something ancient and precious under a layer of dust. "You want to be _forgiven_."

River closes her eyes. "Don't we all?"

* * *

><p>009. <em>The danced-out shoes.<em>

Somehow the Doctor ends up carrying both pairs of shoes; his shiny black loafers tied together by the laces and slung over one shoulder, and Amy's bright yellow heels, because she refused to climb the stairs while wearing them and wouldn't leave them behind.

The noise of the party follows them faintly up to the top of the tallest tower. Stepping out into the warm spring night, they can see the lanterns dappling the garden below, and the white gazebo where they'd left a drunken Rory to snore in peace. The Doctor leans on the parapets and Amy settles next to him, her shoulder warm against his.

"You're a _terrible _dancer," she says after a moment.

"So are you," the Doctor counters.

"Not like you! I swear, it's like watching a drunken giraffe trying to get about."

The Doctor snorts with laughter. "Really, Pond, a _giraffe_?"

"Yeah, you're all legs and wobbly neck – oh, shut up, you know what I mean," Amy says, elbowing him affectionately.

He taps the shoe hanging against his chest. "I'll have you know that it's impossible to dance badly in these. They were a birthday present from Fred Astaire."

"Ooh, can we go meet him?" Amy asks.

"Well, I do owe him a great deal of…" the Doctor trails off at the look on her face. "All right, we'll go and see him. First thing in the morning, eh?"

But first, while they're waiting for Rory to sleep off his three whiskeys, they test the magic shoes in the console room until Amy is satisfied (though the Doctor refuses to try on her heels).

* * *

><p>013. <em>The magician and his pupil.<em>

"Now _don't drop them_. Dropping them will create a catastrophic temporal anomaly," the Doctor says, handing Rory three thermocouplings. "It's red to yellow, blue to green, easy as cake. Go ahead, give it the old what-for."

Rory glances at the thermocouplings, then back to the Doctor. "But, I don't – I'm not sure I –"

"Oh, come on! Have some _confidence_, Rory!" The Doctor grabs him by the shoulders and spins him around, shoving him towards the time rotor. "Nothing to it."

Carefully, Rory extends the red coupling towards the yellow slot. Its legs unfold, reaching to connect –

"_NO_!" the Doctor roars. Rory jumps, nearly dropping the thermocoupling, but the Doctor is suddenly right behind him and grabs his wrist. "Not… like… that," the Doctor breathes. "Here, I'll show you."

The Doctor's hands are on his hips, moving him two paces to the left, and Rory thinks he'll let go then but he doesn't; those big hands are sliding around to the front of him, and before Rory can so much as squeak the Doctor is pressing on his abdomen, his alien skin unexpectedly cool. He's muttering "Stomach in, chest out," then "shoulders back" – Rory isn't responding, so he makes the change himself – and then he steps back, admiring his handiwork. "There, try it like that, shouldn't do too much damage," he says brightly.

He bounds up the stairs, leaving Rory too-hot and flustered and wondering whether the Doctor can possibly be _that _oblivious.

Something explodes up on the console, and he thinks gloomily that he probably can.

* * *

><p>014. <em>The youth who wanted to learn what fear is.<em>

They're running, Rory and Amy and the Doctor, with great flaming bat-gargoyles in hot pursuit, and they're almost back to the TARDIS when Rory trips. Hitting the ground knocks his heart into his throat and he's going to die in the mud, roasted alive by ugly church decorations –

Then strong hands grab his collar and his shoulder and also somehow his elbow and he's hauled upwards. It's the Doctor, the Doctor's turned around and come back for him, and is dragging him towards the TARDIS; Rory tries to help, and manages to get his feet back under him just in time to overbalance the Doctor and send them crashing to the floor.

Amy throws the lever and the force of the takeoff sends Rory and the Doctor rolling against the stairs, and Rory can feel the bruises forming between his ribs but he doesn't care, his heart is still in his throat and he can feel the Doctor's hearts hammering at him and somehow he's ended up on top of the Time Lord, his hands braced against the floor on either side of the Doctor's head, their chests pressed together and their legs all tangled.

And he would probably have gotten up again and stammered an apology, but the adrenaline and relief and gratitude are making everything spin and so before he can think better of it (always _thinking_), Rory closes his eyes and jumps.

The Doctor's lips taste like space and strawberries and the most exquisite terror and joy and like nothing Rory's ever known in his life.

* * *

><p>017. <em>Friends in life and death.<em>

"He won't always be like this, you know," River tells Amy over coffee on Trapper's Moon. The Doctor has dragged Rory across the street to look at a cage of dancing spiders, and Amy glances out the window at the backs of their heads.

"What do you mean, 'like this'?" she asks.

"He'll change someday," says River. "He's a Time Lord, and when a Time Lord dies –" Amy shudders, fighting that thought with her whole body, and River reaches out and touches her lightly on the wrist. "I know, Amy, but this is important. When a Time Lord dies, they… change. He'll get a new face, a new body. He'll still be the Doctor, but…" she shakes her head. "He'll see everything differently. Even you."

Amy fidgets with her cup for a moment, then looks up, and River isn't at all surprised by the fire in her eyes. "So he'll change," Amy says flatly. "What'll that matter? He'll still have me."

"Even if you don't have him?"

"Of course," Amy says, looking out the window again. Her expression shifts from defiant anger to something softer and stronger. It's a look that River knows well.

"Thank you," she says softly, but Amy is watching her Doctor and her husband, and doesn't hear.

* * *

><p>062. <em>Keeping up appearances.<em>

It's been a while since she's caught the Doctor doing anything particularly strange, so Amy isn't really surprised when she steps out onto the balcony of a villa in Palermo to find the Doctor up on a stepladder, painting the TARDIS.

She pauses in the doorway to watch him, squinting in the dazzling Mediterranean sun. He's found a white painter's cap and smock somewhere, and is flinging paint with more abandon than accuracy. About a fifth of the balcony is already splattered with blue much bluer than the sea or the sky.

"Does a time machine need to be painted?" she wonders.

"No, it doesn't," River calls, from where she's sunbathing safely out of range. "It's a chameleon circuit, a disguise. The image stays static no matter what you do to it."

"Don't listen to them, dear," the Doctor says loudly to TARDIS, and plants a great big kiss right between the doors.

Rory shuffles up behind Amy in the doorway, shirtless and tousle-haired. "Good morning, all," he yawns, wrapping his arms around her waist and kissing her cheek. He pauses a moment, taking in the scene. Then, to Amy; "Does he realize his lips are blue?"

* * *

><p>089. <em>You shall see me a little while longer.<em>

For all the years Canton had had to prepare himself, driving away from that beach was possibly the most difficult task he'd done for the Doctor yet.

They had been so young! So young, and vibrant and fearful as young people were – as he had been. Oh, he remembered so well… and now he knew origin of the shadow that had haunted Amy's face even when they had first met; he knew what Rory's careful silence had been a shield against. And he knew (one last gift from the Doctor) that he, Canton, was still out there somewhere, young and rash and about to have the greatest adventure of his life.

He wondered briefly if he should have given River or Rory a message to give to his younger self – a warning, or an instruction. But then he thought of Daniel waiting for him at home, old and wrinkly now too but as sharp and handsome as ever, and he smiled to think that things would continue on their course now, and his life would unfold unchanged.

He glanced a few times into his rearview mirror, to see his future past hanging silvery low in the sky, then turned his gaze back to the road ahead.

* * *

><p>095. <em>I knew you were coming.<em>

Amy wakes on the floor of the cargo bay, breathless and burning to ashes in the harsh white lights. The Doctor is on his knees beside her, doing something frantic with the sonic, but she can't see what because there's blood everywhere – her blood, on his hands, on the screwdriver, on the floor, more blood than she thought she could hold, and it's still oozing from the gash in her side. She dimly remembers the big alien bug coming at her with a sword, but the Doctor had left –

She must have croaked his name, because he raises his head to look at her, his face chalk-white and his eyes wide. "Don't worry, Pond, I've got you," he says. "I told you I'd come back."

"Knew you would," she rasps, then shudders at a stab of pain. "Knew you wouldn't leave – the ship, the moon –"

"And you," he says – almost _growls_ – and he stops sonicking for a minute to lean over so he's almost lying on the floor at her side. He presses his forehead to hers, soft as a kiss, and a burst of warmth drives away the pain for a moment. "Remember that, Amelia. Believe it," he breathes. "I will _always _come back for you."


	2. Chapter 2

Second installment woo! For those of you who commented that you'd like to see more Amy/Doctor stuff: these little drabbles have turned into a bit of a way for me to explore ships outside my initial one. That's not to say that there won't be any Amy/11 here, just that Amy/11 isn't my primary focus - though I can't say how gratifying it is to hear that you folks appreciate the 11/Amy stuff I've written. I can promise that once I finish lococession, my other current in-progress story, I'll try to go back to some more 11/Amy-focused stuff in addition to the canon-compliant experiments.

Anyway, I hope you can enjoy this batch. Thanks for reading!

* * *

><p>002. <em>Curing a sick lion.<em>

On the Ceres oil platform, the Doctor loses track of Rory and doesn't go looking for him until after the earthquake, and only then because the oilmen have started talking about an alien doctor on the drilling rig being stupid and insane. The Doctor is puzzled by this, since he's in the control room, so he can't be on the drilling rig. Can he?

He isn't, but Rory is. When the Doctor gets there, Rory's up high on the drilling rig, elbow-deep in the thorax of one of the huge tentacled minebeasts. The beast is still breathing, huge gasps that make its flanks swell and subside like a wave on the open sea. Chlorine rises in yellow wisps from its wound – not a wound, an _incision_ – and Rory's wearing the top half of a pressure suit, already stained with chlorine and black alien bile.

The Doctor waits until Rory's finished, climbed down the rig, and shucked the half-suit onto the deck before he speaks. "You could've killed it."

"Obviously I don't know much about minebeast physiology, but it's not hard to tell that if something's punctured and leaking air, you should probably patch it up," Rory retorts. "I'm a bit rattled right now, Doctor, so if you could not tell me how stupid I am, that would be lovely. Thanks."

He is rattled; he's shaking. "It could've killed _you_," the Doctor says.

"Yeah, and I could've just let it die, could I? I'm a nurse," Rory snaps. He pauses, then adds, "To _everything_."

"I know," the Doctor says.

* * *

><p>011. <em>The girl as helper in the hero's fight.<em>

The Doctor wakes up lying on a cold flat surface. That's good; waking up is good, even if his knees and ribs are doing their best to convince him otherwise. Cages, though, are not so good, especially when they have their bars pressed rudely into the side of face, and are swinging about five meters off the floor of the Imperial Palace on Knigurtionda.

From far below comes a soft _beep_. Then a gravelly, unfamiliar voice says "'e's all right, Miss. They roughed 'im up a little, but on the 'ole, nothing to worry about."

"Thanks, Grubwin," says another voice, Amy's voice. Light blooms and expands between the Doctor's hearts, rushing out into his bruised limbs, pushing back the pain. He opens his eyes, risking the vertigo of seeing the palace floor spin through the bars of the cage, and tries to call out that he's so glad she's alive, she's magnificent, and she should _get him down_ now, please, but the only thing to come out of his mouth is a strangled groan.

"Oi, Doctor! You awake up there?"

The Doctor flails into something like a sitting position and grabs the bars. "Amy!" he wheezes. "Amy, brilliant Amy, you're okay – the Hive Queen, did she –"

"Her shuttle just left," Amy says.

"The generator?"

"Completely stabilized."

"Good. Good." The Doctor slumps forward against the bars. "How did that happen, exactly?"

"Once you'd been knocked out, it was all pretty easy, actually," Amy drawls. "Turns out the Queen and I had quite a bit in common."

The gigantic, trollish Grubwin taps her respectfully on the shoulder. "Should I crank 'im down, Miss?"

"Oh, I don't know, maybe he could stand to stay up there a little longer. Learn a lesson or two about – hmm, what was it? Oh, I remember - letting people get capturedto_ 'keep them out of the way'_!"

After Amy's stormed out, the Doctor looks down into Grubwin's reproachful tusks. "I wanted to make sure she didn't get hurt," he croaks.

"I fink she could say the same for you, mate," Grubwin replies. "'Specially just now. 's quite sweet, really, if'n you ask me."

* * *

><p>015. <em>Little brother and little sister.<em>

"All right, Doctor," Amy says, crossing her arms. "_Explain._"

"Well. Right. You see, imagine a great big – no, that isn't it at all, actually, it was more like a –" he pauses, panic beginning to show on his soot-smudged face. He runs his fingertips over the ragged holes in his jacket, reaches up to nervously straighten his bow tie only to find that it isn't there. After a minute under Amy's glare, he gives up. "She started it."

"Did not!" Annabelle cries. "He said there was a swimming pool –"

"There is a swimming pool!" the Doctor insists. "_She _was the one who wanted to go through the twinkling garden –"

"—he _pushed _me –"

"—I told her not touch the twinkles, I _told_ her they were superdimensional mini-vortexes –"

Amy holds up a hand, and the Doctor and Annabelle fall silent. "Doctor, she's _six,_" Amy points out. "Of course if you took her to a twinkling place…"

"Yeah, and I'm nine-hundred and eighty, don't see what that's got to do with it."

"Hey! I heard that," Amy warns. She stares down at the disheveled, dirty Time Lord and little girl for a moment. Indistinguishable wide-eyed pouts stare back. "Belle, go play with your sister," she sighs.

"Yes, Mum!" Annabelle chirps. She sticks her tonuge out at the Doctor, then runs off down the corridor to the console room, calling for Melody.

"Don't I get to go play?" the Doctor asks, intensely interested. Amy stares. "It's just that… they're probably going to _color_," he explains. "With pandimensional crayons, too."

* * *

><p>021. <em>Beloved of women.<em>

"Rory!" the Doctor shouts, bursting through the library doors in a high-velocity whirlwind of tweed. He hits the couch Rory is reading on, tumbles over it, and ends up sitting on the carpet at Rory's feet. "Rory, you're human, you've been Roman, been around a bit. I have a question for you. About _girls_."

Rory sets his book aside. "I'm sorry, what?"

"You know, girls. Human girls. With… girly…stuff. Things."

Rory waits, but the Doctor doesn't elaborate. "Going to need a little more, actually," he prompts.

"Right. I just – well. Is this how they normally act, human girls? First it was River, and now – it's Amy. She's _kissed_ me again. Well." He pauses. "Mostly."

Rory's forehead creases as he tries to follow the Doctor's babbling. "Amy _mostly _kissed you?"

"No, the kissing was mostly Amy's fault. I helped." Another pause. "A little."

"A little?"

"_Mostly _a little."

"Right." Rory pinches the bridge of his nose and closes his eyes for a second, largely to shut out the Doctor's bewildered puppy-dog expression. It's very…distracting. "Hang on, I thought you'd travelled with women before? Amy said there have been lots of them."

"Yes, but I've never been in this body before, what if it's something about this body? I was just wondering if it was a _thing_, if it's some normal aspect of human female behavior that I should write down somewhere for future notice, like a sticky note or something: 'Warning, when picking up companions, remember they are programmed to find the nearest Time Lord and – mmph!"

It's an awkward kiss, which Rory blames on the fact that it's not exactly easy to kiss someone whose head is at the level of your knees. But then the Doctor starts mostly helping, and Rory's too distracted to worry about it anymore.

"All right, not a girl thing, then," the Doctor says as Rory pulls away. "Just a human thing?"

"Could be," Rory says, going back to his book.

* * *

><p>024. <em>Open sesame.<em>

In the Library, the Doctor discovers that he can open the TARDIS doors with a snap of his fingers. That is, of course, the coolest of cool gestures, recognized as a signal of cool on 83% of inhabited planets, including a few dozen whose inhabitants don't even have fingers. Still, he experiments with whistling, and then with tap-dancing, because you never know, do you? (Apparently the TARDIS knows, since she seems strangely unimpressed by the Doctor's best dancing. He had always suspected that time machines had terrible taste.)

River actually dug up the _manual _from somewhere ("They make these out of neutron-filament parchment, Doctor, a supernova won't even singe the pages!") and so she opens the doors the proper Time Lord way, with a temporal-harmonic command in Gallifreyan. The TARDIS responds like a well-programmed Type 40 should, and in return River makes sure to fly her through the sweetest rift in the quadrant.

For Amy, the TARDIS is never locked. She travels with the Doctor for months without wondering about it before he tells her that she she's been thinking _home _and _belonging _so strongly at the TARDIS that it breaks through the outer shielding, overcomes the natural human barriers to telepathy, and activates the door-control circuits directly. "A mind that opens locks," he tells her, grinning. "It's a good thing you ran off with me, Amelia Pond."

Rory just knocks, until the Doctor gives him a key.

* * *

><p>032. <em>Why it turned winter.<em>

It isn't until Hvezda that the Doctor is finally forced to admit that there might, possibly, be a downside to being ginger. It makes one six times more likely to get sacrificed to a ravenous god of volcanoes, for instance.

But those are just odds, and if there was ever one for beating the odds it's Amelia Pond. The Doctor hasn't got halfway up the slope of Mount Look-a-Monster-With-Really-Big-Teeth (roughly translated) when he catches sight of Amy coming the other way, alone and covered in ash and wondrously uncaptured. He doesn't stop his charge, doesn't even slow down, and throws his arms around her so forcefully that a white cloud of ash puffs out from her skin. His hands stir up more ash as he clenches his fingers into the back of her jacket, and he can feel the fine drift of it tickling the back of his neck as it settles over his head. She coughs, turning her face into his shoulder to avoid breathing the stuff in, and he's never been so glad for a respiratory bypass.

"Amy, magnificent Amy," he says. "How did you escape?"

"I shouted 'look over there, it's the volcano god', and when they all went down on their knees I ran," she says. "They'll be coming after me soon."

"No," the Doctor says. "They won't."

"Why? What did you do?" Amy follows the Doctor's eyes up, to the grim clouds over the tip of the volcano which suddenly seem a lot less grim than they did half an hour ago.

Then there's a cold wisp on her cheek and she realizes that the white swirling about her isn't ash; it's snow.

"Prophecy from the gods," the Doctor says, as the snow thickens into flurries around them. He brushes his fingertips across her cheek, chasing off a stray snowflake. "No more sacrifices," he says quietly. "No more capturing and killing. It's over." He presses a kiss to her temple, tasting ash and smoke, then takes her hand. "Now to go back four hundred years and give them the prophecy. Come along, Pond."

* * *

><p>038. <em>The partition of an inheritance.<em>

"What am I?" Melody Pond asks the Doctor on her eighteenth birthday, when he arrives to take her away from her parents, from Earth, because she's being hunted and her home can't protect her anymore.

"You're human, or very nearly," he tells her. "You've got to know what that means."

The colonists of the Gamma Forest are human, or very nearly, which is why the Doctor drops Melody off to enroll at the university there. Her few brief years in Leadworth had taught her _family_; her parents had taught her about good so deep that it had no dark side, about good without rules or reservations. In the Gamma Forest she learns more human things: lust and love and the lines between them; death, and mortal fear of death; courage in the face of mortal fear.

Then one day the Doctor comes back for her, and between adventures he teaches her their language, the whorls in which dream and time alone can be truly expressed. He teaches her their history, the religion of gods, how to understand her strange new time-senses and listen to the stars singing their oldest names. Then he takes her to the Medusa Cascade, or what's left of it, and it sings back to her her own name; one she's never heard before but has always lived, and will continue to live while star after star burns out.

_What am I?_ she asks the Void, which knows her like an old, old friend. The Void envelopes her as though she was a Time Lord (or very nearly).

"What am I, Doctor?" she asks, centuries later, at the Singing Towers.

He has wept many times that night, but now it seems as though it might be for joy. "The very best of us," he tells her. "Human and Gallifreyan and the very, very best."

* * *

><p>046. <em>The man who competes with the devil.<em>

The Doctor's been to a lot of museums, but the Delirium Archive is his _favorite._

It's even better after he knows what it is, after he's battled at Demon's Run and then gets to come back to it long after all traces of military aggression have been obliterated by informative little brass plaques and gift shops. It's so much better when he gets to return in triumph to the last holdout of the Headless Monks, arm-in-arm with the fantastic woman they wanted to weaponize and then destroy.

He doesn't like to gloat, usually, or savor the downfall of his enemies. But for River's sake, he'll make an exception.

"Oh! That one's mine – and that one, and that one," he says, spinning around the Nautilus chamber. "I only messed about a bit with that one, the plaid didn't suit me, I told them, I said, just _wait _until bagpipes come along! And that one – oh, that's just _wrong_, why even bother if you're not going to mention the badger…"

River's leaning on the doorframe, watching him with a faint smile. "You know, Doctor, I've never asked you," she says after a moment. "This game, this keeping score – who's on the other side?"

The Doctor doesn't turn to answer her, but as he leans over a pair of incaradine tablets, she hears him mutter a word in Gallifreyan.

He's been teaching her their language, bit by bit, but she's never heard this word before. It has components of _death_ – but also _history_, and _stillness_, and something like _entropy_.

"Ah," she says quietly. "I see."

* * *

><p>085. <em>Who gives his own goods shall receive it back tenfold.<em>

The Doctor bounds out of the TARDIS into the Ponds' front hall. "Supernova all sorted! How are we doing here, then? Everyone having a good time?"

His Ponds are waiting for him, looking as though they are having the opposite of a good time. On the other hand, the couple of dozen squirrel-sized purple aliens skittering around their feet look to be having the time of their lives.

"Four days!" Amy bursts out. "I can't believe you left us _alien-sitting _for four days! You said two hours!"

"Oh, come on, Amy, they're harmless! And they're cute, look –" The Doctor bends down to pick up one of the creatures. It lifts a tentacle and squelches at him. "Well, harmless anyway," he mutters, pulling his hand back.

"They ate our kitchen table!"

"Well that was very naughty of them!" The Doctor turns to the nearest clump of creatures. "That's hardly the proper way for full-grown Graaxlfes to behave, is it?" To Amy's amazement, the little creatures stop clambering over the walls and gather on the floor, hanging their eyestalks in shame. "No! It isn't!" the Doctor says. "And you're going to give the nice Ponds their table back right away, aren't you?"

The creatures nod.

"Williamses," Rory says automatically, but no one pays any mind. The creatures skitter out into the space between the humans and the Doctor, humming a high note. There's a moment of shimmery strangeness, and a light so bright that Amy is forced to close her eyes, and when she opens them there's a huge table blocking the hallway, made entirely of blue-white diamond.

"Very good!" the Doctor says, tickling the nearest creature. "Atomic matrix reconfiguration," he says to Amy and Rory. He turns back to the TARDIS and flings the doors open, ushering all the Graaxlfes inside. "Goodbye, Ponds!" he shouts over his shoulder, and he's gone.

The table is still there, still solid, still sparkling faintly in the morning light.

After a while Rory says "It's a good thing we didn't tell him about the car."

* * *

><p>097. <em>The wishing ring<em>

Before their wedding, it had always been Rory telling Amy to be careful with her engagement ring, Rory worrying about it getting lost or tarnished or left by the wayside somewhere because Amy had wanted to show it off. He was always afraid of her habit of running roughshod over the things she loved.

After the wedding (and her death and the Pandorica and the end of the universe), things are different.

Now Amy wears the plain wedding band with pride, but the engagement ring is shut in its little velvet box, never on her finger but never far away. She tells Rory that she doesn't want to lose it, which is true; for their first two months in Leadworth she carries it with her constantly, as a charm against misfortune, and she takes it to America in the bottom of her knapsack. Rory, being preoccupied with other things, never bothers to ask her about it. So Amy never tells him about how that ring helped bring him back, kept him from slipping entirely out of her memory even when he hadn't existed anymore, and it's silly and superstitious but she can't help believing that maybe someday it'll help bring him back to her again, and she needs to guard it carefully until then.

She knows that Rory will come back to her always, with or without some silly ring. But she also knows fairy tales, and she knows that tokens of love are powerful things and not to be taken lightly.

* * *

><p>Reviews, as always, are greatly appreciated and help to sustain my poor starved brain until September. Stay snazzy, Whovians!<p> 


	3. Chapter 3

I'm back! Um...hello!

* * *

><p>005. <em>Learning to fear men<em>

A few hours after they barely make it out of the Marquis of Confusion's wedding alive, Rory comes up behind the Doctor in the console room and grabs the back of his jacket.

"Rory," the Doctor says, slow and careful. Then Rory's grip moves to his upper arm and he swings the Doctor around, and the Doctor's taller than Rory, and probably stronger (_Time Lord_), but it doesn't seem like that will help him. "Something wrong?"

"What happened back there, in the engine bay," Rory says. "With Amy. You can't do that again."

The Doctor is beginning to feel the pressure of Rory's strength not on his arm but on his timesense; the door has opened in Rory's head, the Doctor can feel it, can feel the weight of two thousand years of living and dying. That age is pointed at him now, balanced on a sword-point between his hearts. _Menacing _him, in a quiet, polite, Rory sort of way that is no less menacing for all that.

The Doctor thinks about what happened in the engine bay, when Amy went to disarm the fusion chambers. He thinks about what Rory must have felt, running up to tell them about the deaths on the ship above, arriving only to see the last glint of the engine fires on Amy's hair as she vanished down the ladder into darkness.

"She volunteered," the Doctor says quietly.

"You sent her," Rory says, just as quietly. "And she nearly died."

"Yeah, well, we do a lot of that, nearly dying," the Doctor snaps. "I can't always keep both of you safe."

"I know that. I just want _you_ to know, Doctor – if something happens to her, it won't be just yourself you have to answer to."

The Doctor meets his gaze for a long moment, then nods.

Rory lets him go, and the Doctor can feel the door in Rory's head close, locking the Lone Centurion away again. The millenia fall from his face, leaving only shell-shock and exhaustion – and something else, something the Doctor can't place. Then Rory quietly asks "Are you hurt?", and the Doctor's hearts crack, because some part of him is already steeled to face Rory's rage and grief someday, but Rory's steadfast love will make it so much worse.

"I'm okay," he says. Rory accepts the lie with a nod and heads down to the pool to find his wife. 

* * *

><p>016. <em>Sleeping beauty.<em>

Late afternoon sunlight pours in through the huge windows of the British Museum's main gallery, casting the Pandorica in low fire. Rory Williams, security guard, nineteen hundred and seven years atoning and not yet forgiven, tries his best to keep out of the light as he comes through on his daily rounds; he gets uneasy with the sun in his eyes. It's something he hasn't been able to shake since Rome.

It's an ordinary Tuesday, and the gallery is empty. Rory takes advantage of the quiet to pace carefully around the Pandorica, inspecting it for cracks, as he's done at least once a day for nineteen hundred and seven years. Today, like every day, each heavy black face is implacable as ever, and he isn't sure whether to be disappointed or relieved. Either way, he's just considering slipping under the velvet rope to tell Amy about his day when a small group of teenagers enter the gallery, their voices echoing strangely in the high space. Rory slips unobstrusively into a side room and pretends to inspect a stone Dalek, thinking to wait until they've gone.

He can't help overhearing them, though, as they pause to gape at the Pandorica. "Look at that weird pattern," one girl says. "I wonder what it means?"

_It means everything. _Rory drifts over to a cluster of plaster penguins, and in the beam of sunlight from a nearby window he swears he can see the reflective glint of a mirror, and beyond that white pillars and the Venetian sky. Suddenly the air seems to reek of ash and fish and perfume. He nearly smiles.

"It's beautiful," one of the visitors says. Rory turns to look back at the Pandorica, and in its smooth side he sees the opaque black surface of the Leadworth duck pond, the night he ran out of Amy's house in a panic after Mels let his secret out – the night Amy chased after him, shouting his name, until finally she caught up to him at the duck pond with no ducks and everything changed.

Quietly, more to himself than the girl who'd spoken, he says "Oh, you've no idea." 

* * *

><p>019. <em>The confession.<em>

The Ponds are breakfasting on a bench in the pastry garden when the Doctor dashes in from the wardrobe, waving his hands and shouting. "Amy! There you are. Been looking everywhere. Amelia!" He stumbles to a halt in front of the bench and takes a deep breath, trying to compose himself. He stands with his fingers laced across his stomach for a moment, enduring Amy's expectant look, then announces, "I love you!"

Rory drops his cheese Danish into the grass, feeling a flush of heat rise to his face. "_What?_"

"Rory! Roranicus Pondicus! I love you as well!" The Doctor's beaming, very pleased with himself. He glances back and forth between them. "Are we all clear, then?"

"I, I don't –" Rory begins, but he's saved from having to continue by Amy's indignant interruption.

"Well, that's all well and good, Doctor, but you couldn't have told us last night, when we were about to get chomped on by a huge alligator beast?"

"That's the thing, see, I don't always say it when I should," the Doctor says. "There've been mix-ups, with humans, so I thought it'd be good to have it all covered, for emergencies. It seems to be quite important that I say it out loud, so I have. That's new." He's got that distracted, inward smile on again, the one he usually saves for repairing the TARDIS. "I should have done it ages ago. It's quite fun, this caring lark." 

* * *

><p>026. <em>Her only trick<em>

"Wait," the Doctor says, spinning around in mid-run, nearly causing the young woman following him to fall as she tries to avoid a crash. He narrows his eyes at her as she stops to catch a breath, brushing her curls impatiently out of her face. "You really are Melody Pond - River Song?" he asks.

"Yes, of course I am," she pants. "You know perfectly well it's me!"

"And you _work _here," the Doctor says.

"Yes! That's my department over there, look." She points down a dark side hallway. "I'm a lecturer in archaeology. That's why I called you, these artifact acquistions are shady, I think the Neptune Congress is involved -"

"An archeological mystery? That's all? No tricks, no surprises, no… secrets?" the Doctor asks, his eyebrows vanishing skeptically into the cloudbank of his hair.

"What are you babbling about, Doctor?" River asks. She's young, almost as young as he's ever seen her, and incredulity makes her eyes shine. "Why would I keep secrets from you, of all people?"

"Right," the Doctor sighs, and turns, straightening his coat. "Of course. Silly me. It's just difficult to recognize you when you aren't being…_mysterious_." 

* * *

><p>035. <em>Wise through experience.<em>

After their narrow escape from the Plutonian bat-gargoyles, they go to an intergalactic funfair on Sirius IV. Amy has a marvelous time for about an hour, then looks up from a game of laser croquet to notice that Rory has vanished.

She leaves the Doctor in the petting zoo and walks out of the cluster of carousels and game-booths, up through the rising hills of reddish grass towards the TARDIS. Rory is sitting there, his back to the wondrous time machine, his head buried in his hands, a picture of perfect misery.

Amy sighs and flops down next to him, stretching her legs out in the grass. He doesn't even twitch. She tries to wait him out, but after a minute or two of despairing silence she gets bored and gives up. "You've snogged the Doctor, haven't you?"

_That _makes him jump. He looks up at her with panic in his eyes. "I – I didn't mean to, I swear, it just –sort of _happened _–"

"And now you're sulking, because it was amazing but also kind of bizarre, and he's brilliant and wonderful but you're not sure if he's really _real_, not the way that other things are real. And he's not human, so you don't know if it meant anything to him, or the same as it meant to you – if you even knew what it meant to you. Which you don't. And you're a bloke, and so's he, so I expect you feel your manhood's threatened, or something. And you sort of think it'll never happen again, but you want it to. A lot. And him being a beautiful bloody idiot all the time isn't helping."

Rory gapes at her. "I'm not – I'm not _threatened_," he chokes out.

"Well, the rest of it's true then, yeah? And you're all hot and bothered because of it."

"How did you know?" he asks, looking genuinely amazed.

"How d'you think?" Amy smirks at the cascade of emotions that cross his face – befuddlement, realization, dismay, resignation. She leans over and pecks him on the cheek. "Don't worry," she says, "it'll get better. Well, not really, but you'll get used to it. And in the meantime… you're not exactly out of options, are you?"

She lets that sink in for a minute, then stands and stretches and heads into the TARDIS, leaving him alone with his (no doubt very interesting) thoughts. 

* * *

><p>039. <em>Bargain not to become angry.<em>

The Quard Empire has decimated three populated moons and is set to launch a fleet of black hole generators at the mother planet, which will undoubtedly kill billions of people across three species and send intelligent life in this star system back to the Dark Ages. But that isn't why the Doctor almost destroys them.

No, the Doctor nearly destroys them because halfway through an exhausting argument the Quard High Warlord suddenly says "Your friends, Doctor," and motions to the doors of the control room, where a pair of guards are dragging Amy and Rory in. For a long moment all the Doctor can see is his Amy and Rory, his Ponds, his _friends_, being dragged in chains across the floor, fresh from the prison cells no doubt. One of Amy's eyes is swollen, and a dark bruise is beginning to spread across her face. When the guards haul them to their feet, the Doctor can see that Rory's limping. And for one black second, the world-ending rage flares up in him like the first flash of a supernova, ready to incinerate these insects for daring to hurt the people he loves.

Then he looks into their faces, Amy's hopeful, Rory's patient and weary, and he sees himself in them as he should be – sees that they're waiting for him to save everyone and pull a happy ending out of nowhere so they can all go home. So he does.

Lately he's been wondering whether Amy and Rory are really risking their lives to save others, or if they're doing it to save _him_, so that in exchange he'll save (or not destroy) everyone else. Whether they know that he uses their love to keep himself on a leash, that this is how it always has to be; that he keeps and risks companions, gambling with the lives of friends, so that he won't go mad and cold the way the old Time Lords did.

He wonders if they'd stay, if they really understood. He wonders whether he's a risk they'd be willing to take. 

* * *

><p>048. <em>Sunlight carried into the windowless house<em>

"Good," the Doctor says, to no one in particular, although he feels about as far from good as it's possible to feel. The hot white lights of the cargo deck are beating down on him; the floor and his hands and the knees of his trousers are sticky with blood – Amy's blood. That's worse than extremely very not good.

But she'll be all right now, he's almost certain. The wound is closed, the skin regenerated, and all that's left now is to get her back home, safe to the TARDIS, and then do something about the awful deathly white color of her skin, because she shouldn't ever be this waxy and still, not his bright burning Amy, blood loss or no.

She's tall, almost as tall as he is (has he not noticed that before? That's criminal, not noticing something like that), but he's strong for a skinny bloke and he carries her easily, through corridors full of startled space marines to a broom cupboard. The TARDIS is waiting, cold and dark, with no light in the windows; her engines are cut to conserve power, after the radiation belt wounded her on the way in.

But he can feel the telepathic field still active, can feel it reach out to him, playing over his surface thoughts and nudging anxiously at the lifeless girl in his arms. The doors spring open on their own, and light blooms on the console grate as the Doctor steps over the threshold; warm golden light, relief and welcome, the untameable vortex-driven matrix taking heart from the return of her fragile human and idiotic Time Lord.

"Oi," the Doctor murmurs, but the engines are already grinding to life, taking them somewhere – somewhere warm, probably, and near the sea. Exactly where they need to go.

* * *

><p>054. <em>How wide the world is.<em>

It's not even that Leadworth is small (though it is), and it's not even really that it's ordinary (though it is that, too), because everywhere is ordinary – everywhere in England, at least. Maybe Amy's childhood would have been more interesting if she had been able to persuade Aunt Sharon to move to New York City, or Bombay, or Tokyo, somewhere with colors that didn't exist in the English countryside and where no one made fun of anyone's accent because everyone spoke different languages that sounded like the sea, or the harsh calls of some outlandish bird. But the only place Aunt Sharon ever took her was to the school building, which was built of concrete blocks and bright plastic, and always smelled faintly of spinach and ammonia.

There's not a lot of sky in Leadworth, or any hidden passageways or caves, or even any gnarled, dark woods where a young girl wandering on her own in the forbidden twilight might reasonably expect to encounter fairies, or trolls, or mysterious blue boxes. And after Aunt Sharon, encouraged by the second psychiatrist, finally works up the nerve and cunning to take away her books, there's nothing interesting left in Amelia's world outside her dreams.

You can do a lot of dreaming in fourteen years. 

* * *

><p>060. <em>Staying with a friend in rainy weather.<em>

The TARDIS lands with a _thump_, and the Doctor sighs in relief. Then he opens the doors. On the other side of them is a clifftop overlooking a harbor, with a sea the silver color of mercury washing against black stone jetties under a foggy green sky. A dirt path runs right past the TARDIS, leading up to a lighthouse built from lavender stone. Its windows are all ablaze, and the beacon darts out like a great silver needle into the gathering darkness of twilight.

The Doctor doesn't see the dim figure coming down from the lighthouse until she calls out to him, "Temporofluxation storm in the delta quantum waveform? Need to ground the TARDIS for a few hours of objective time to wait it out?"

"Oh dear," the Doctor says softly.

River moves into the soft glow of the TARDIS lights. "I bet you say that to all the girls," she says, grinning.

The Doctor glares at her. "I was set for Earth," he says accusingly. "Thirtieth Century, when they clone Cleopatra and get mammoths to fly."

"Yes, you were, but Sexy and I had a chat and decided you'd better come here instead."

"_Sexy! _You don't – you can't call her – my _TARDIS_-!" the Doctor splutters.

"Oh, don't fuss, Doctor, she doesn't mind. Are you coming in? I've got everything laid out for dinner. It's a bit of a backwater planet, but they make a wonderful wine." The Doctor stands in stubborn silence for a minute, until finally River rolls her eyes and sighs "Oh, come on now, I'm not going to ravish you. Although - remember that quantum storm excuse, it comes in handy later. Now, are you coming?"

"Why should I?" the Doctor asks.

River's expression softens a bit. "You're grounded for a little while, and you could spend it with someone who cares about you, instead of moping about on your own. Don't you think that's worthwhile?"

"I don't mope," the Doctor grumbles, but he steps out of the TARDIS. The doors swing shut behind him on their own.

"Just a few hours," River coaxes, beginning to smile again. "Care to make them interesting?"

The Doctor doesn't answer, but when she offers her arm, he takes it and walks with her up the cliff into the gathering night. 

* * *

><p>090. <em>Another matter.<em>

Jenny arranges sparrows' hearts daintily on a tray, piles another tray with treats for the human gentry, and carries both into the small party in the drawing room. As soon as she enters, she looks for Vastra, and sees that lantern-jawed captain leaning far too close, all but stroking the scales on the back of her lady's green hand.

Jenny sets the human tray aside and bears the larks' hearts directly over to the Silurian, presenting them with a little courtesy. "Beggin' your pardon, sir, ma'am," she says, and is pleased to see the captain pull back to a proper distance, his smile fading as his creeping hand drops back to his side. "If it isn't too much trouble, a matter urgently requiring milady's attention has arisen in the kitchen," she continues.

Vastra tilts her head, curious. Not for the first time, Jenny silently thanks the Lord for the Silurian's difficulty with human expressions. "Very well," Vastra says at last. "Do excuse me, Captain."

She follows Jenny to the door. As soon as they're out of the sight of the guests, Vastra's long tongue flicks out over Jenny's shoulder, snapping a lark's heart off the tray. She swallows it in a single gulp. "Is something wrong? Has there been word from the Yard?" she asks, as they head into the kitchen.

"No word," Jenny says, setting the tray down on the counter.

"It isn't the Doctor again, is it? I swear, that man can't stay out of trouble –"

"Actually, ma'am, it's another matter entirely," Jenny says, reaching out to take Vastra's hand. The tiny scales are rough and radiate heat against her palm, like a pebbled shore warmed by the summer sun. "I didn't like how close that man was standing to you," Jenny says, her eyes downcast.

"Oh, he's a man, is he?" Vastra asks, feigning surprise. Jenny scowls, and she laughs. "Only joking, my dear. There's no mistaking that one. But," she places one claw under Jenny's chin and lifts her head. "I'll be sure to keep away from him in future if it upsets you. Mammals! You're so territorial!"

"It's a failing in us, m'lady," Jenny agrees, and smiles.


End file.
